


Frozen Comforts

by worldturtling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Clothes Shopping, Cooking, Cuddling, Domestic, Emotional Comfort, Grocery Shopping, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing Clothes, Trauma, dealing with invisible wounds, dealing with trauma caused by violence, hurt!Dean, lapsex (implied), protective!benny, shopping for each other, tactile comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 14:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worldturtling/pseuds/worldturtling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place directly after the events of Goodbye Stranger and the crypt scene. Dean visits Benny’s boat that night, and stays a few days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frozen Comforts

Dean pounds on Benny’s door at 2 am, genuinely surprised that Benny had been asleep.

“You bangin’ hard enough to wake the dead, and you’re the surprised one?”

Dean’s small face balks and then closes up, eyes shuttering against something. Benny gets a whiff of dried blood, and sees it all over Dean’s jacket, front of his shirt stained brown.

“That blood on you is human, brother.” Benny notes warily, and Dean’s lip trembles just slightly before responding.

“That’s ‘cause it’s mine.”

Benny gapes and his brain kicks in just in time before too much confusion scares Dean away; the boy looking like the small frightened shadow of his friend already. He puts on a smile.

“Well, don’t stand out in the cold like that. Come on in, you know it’s always good to see you.”

Dean Steps into the old rickety boat, and Benny notes the lack of his brother tailing him, but locks the door anyway. If Dean was alone it’s because he wanted to be. If Dean was alone with Benny, all the same.

“Cozy,” Dean says, looking around at the crowded cabin, and the bed with the threadbare sheet.

“Yeah, not much to decorate,” Benny comes up behind him, scratching the back of his neck. Dean, without any words, walks to the bed and starts taking off his boots. Benny watches him slowly unlace each boot, place them to the side, and then he starts shouldering off his jacket, which is when Benny joins him. His bare feet pad across the small floor space and stands to the side of Dean, taking his jacket. Dean unbuttons the rest of his green collar shirt, and then actually strips off the simple black tee shirt until Benny can see all the bare expanse of his soft freckled shoulders and collarbone, down to the broad chest and belly. Benny can also see some of the dried blood stuck to the skin over his collar bone, and Dean’s fingers touch over it as if he sees what Benny sees.

Benny quickly bundles the clothes up and puts them in the sink to soak, brings back a wet towel and one of his spare henleys.

“It gets cold in here, brother.” Benny says, sitting next to a forlornly still Dean carefully, and gingerly wipes the dried blood stains away, under Dean’s bobbing adam’s apple.

Benny couldn’t notice a scratch on Dean, or any scent of a healing wound. But Dean’s eyes shone like a wounded animal and that was enough for Benny to toss he towel to the side and go down when Dean put an arm over his stomach and tugged him into a horizontal embrace. Dean breathed in deeply, sighed into Benny’s shirt, and Benny rested a hand on the small of Dean’s back hesitantly. Dean was fast asleep in his arms in seconds.

-

When Benny wakes, it’s because Dean is making a bunch of clattering noises in the kitchen in front of the bed. Dean winces at him, and Benny notes the fallen fry pans collapsed at his feet. He rubs at his eyes twice and remembers Dean actually visited him last night.

“You know I don’t actually use those, right?” he notes the sponge and soap in Dean’s hands, then the clean tin pots next to him.

“I’ve got a buddy coming nearby I called a few hours ago, I’m meeting him to get some blood in an hour.” Benny noted Dean hadn’t removed the Henley last night, nor put his pants back on. Dean Winchester was doing dishes and grocery shopping in his underwear and Benny’s clothes in Benny’s kitchen. Benny rubs his eyes again.

Dean does grab his pants again, leaving an entirely clean and unused collection of tin kitchen pots in his wake. He laces his boots up, and rifles through Benny’s drawer for a slightly big for his frame overshirt to shrug over Benny’s Henley.

“Will you be okay out there?” Benny grabs his right wrist and Dean flinches, which makes Benny snap his hand away like lightning had struck him. Dean is about to say something, looking guilty, but then he swallows the words down and shakes his head.

“I’ll be back in twenty.” And before Benny can say anything, Dean leans over and kisses him deep, tongue needy in Benny’s mouth. Benny barely has time to taste him before he leaves.

“Overcast day out by the way, just your thing right?” then he’s out.

Benny notices there’s a red symbol newly painted on his door, . He smells chalk with some relief.

-

He goes out to the fish market and grabs a carton of six eggs, a loaf of bread, coffee, small carton of orange juice, and fresh caught salmon, not sure if Dean was here to stay long enough for them to go out into the open sea for some fishing.  

He makes it back in time to see Dean carrying the cooler to his door, Benny’s clothes hanging loose on him in a way that shouldn’t look so good.

“I got you, brother.” Benny moves him to the side to slide his key in, their hips bumping.

“What’d  _you_  get?” Dean looks over his back curiously. Benny smiles.

“Enough for lunch, dinner, maybe some breakfast tomorrow depending on how long you plan on stayn’.” They walk in, Benny stepping aside to let Dean in first, and locking the door again behind them.

“Can I ask what’s with the Picasso on my door?” Dean gets down on his knees to start placing a cooler full of blood bags, bless him,  in the small fridge. Dean glances up at him briefly.

“Protection.”

“Something I can’t protect myself against?” Benny is amused. Dean makes a gesture to Benny and Benny hands him the eggs.

“Angels.” He says, shutting the fridge and looking at the fish packet Benny means to season. He scrunches his nose at the smell of fresh fish, and Benny rolls his eyes.

“It’ll smell better when it’s cooked.” He gets one of the puts and starts cleaning the fish. “Wanna tell me if I should be expecting a third party to join us?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Not even your brother?” Benny tries to sound casual, but he knows it’s a touchy subject for Dean. He knew the reason Dean had tried to cut off contact was because of pressure and the disapproval of his brother, and he didn’t want to stir any reaction to bolt on Dean’s part. But he needed to know if he’d have an angry hunter knocking down his door  while he was unsuspecting and possibly in his drawers and naught else.

“Sam understands I needed time away.” Dean says in a defensive tone, more to an invisible figure Benny can’t see than Benny himself. Benny hums as he puts the fish in a pot and finds a serrated knife to cut the lemons with. Dean had cleaned all the cutlery too.

It’s still overcast outside and he can hear Dean shift on the bed behind him.

“If you have a broom around here I can wipe the floor. Or the deck.” His voice is teasing now and Benny huffs in amusement, shaking his head.

“You can sit tight and rest as long as you want, Dean.” He can  _feel_  Dean’s expression go sour, and he remembers now. Dean doesn’t sit idle, Dean is active and constantly moving. Stopping is a disruption to something natural.

“Actually, I meant to wax the side of the captain’s quarters today. Lots of arm work though.”

“Where do you keep the wax?” his tone is perking and Benny smirks.

“Behind the cabin, towards the bow. I put it out last night.”

Dean walks out the door without another word.

He finishes seasoning the fish, and lets the lemon cook it some while he opens up several blood bags and drains them. Then he heads out to help Dean.

-

Dean goes back inside when they finish around four, wiping his face with a towel and heading straight to the bathroom.

“Bar of soap to your right.” Benny calls after him, his own sore muscles more craving a blood bag or two to ease the pain.

He evaluates the salmon as ready to cook and turns the stove on. He looks behind him, and notices Dean must have attempted to make the bed, corners of the ratty sheet tucked into parts of the mattress.

-

Dean smells like clovers and that slightly acrid aftertaste smell of the citrus bar of soap that Benny uses. He smells like that all over, and when he steps out, he has Benny’s blue towel around  his waist.

“That smells good?”

“Don’t sound so shocked Dean, I’ll remind you I’ve been employed as a chef before.”  

“I normally don’t like fish.”

“Well don’t you worry, it ain’t catfish, didn’t wanna upset your allergies,” he winks at Dean and Dean looks both impressed and disgusted at his attempt at humor. He then reaches into Benny’s drawer again for a shirt, and Benny realizes he’s gonna have to do laundry much sooner than expected. He half expects Dean to fish around in his underwear drawer too, but Dean just reaches for his jeans and pulls them on, sliding right into them and fitting himself in snugly. Benny’s mouth feels dry.

Dean is the one who sets the little table up to the side of the bed putting the forks and knives around. Benny puts the salmon on toast and serves up the platters.

-

Dean offers to wash up while Benny washes himself up, because he still smelled like wax according to Dean, although Benny’s olfactory senses were just a little more heightened, he didn’t object.

When he steps out, Dean is spread out on his mattress. Benny’s mouth parts when Dean’s legs part farther.

He gets up on his elbows, and holds a hand out to him, and Benny’s hand goes to it like magnets. From there he’s shrugging off his suspenders and Dean is pulling his shirt off. Dean’s tongue is just as desperate and clinging to Benny’s as before, but it’s harsher this time, fighting and trying to draw Benny out. Dean pushes and Benny lets him roll them over, Dean’s thighs spread over his lap and grinding himself down tauntingly, his nails digging into Benny’s shoulders.

Benny frames his face between his big inelegant hands and Dean draws back. Benny holds it there, looking up into Dean’s shining eyes, bright green and flecks of gold visible to him even now, even when only a shadow of moonlight was seeping through the room. The pad of his thumb brushes the corner of Dean’s mouth, and Dean angles his neck and nips at it, envelops Benny’s thumb between his bitten flushed lips and moaning like the most wanton sight.

Benny pulls his thumb out and yanks Dean’s head down to his mouth, and Dean tumbles down willingly.

-

 Dean settles himself half on top of him for an hour after that, his eyes closing slowly like a cat when Benny runs his fingers through his hair, petting it down and rubbing it back up.

Dean rucks the blanket up around Benny’s legs and Dean’s waist, then wraps his arm around Benny’s somach, and makes a pillow of his chest. Benny doesn’t think he’ll be moving any time soon, with Dean tucked in so perfectly under his arms.

Under his arms, with eyes closed and mouth half smothered by Benny’s cool skin, Dean starts mumbling word, clarity following slowly after they’re said.

“We were looking for a tablet.”

-

The next morning, Benny is making eggs for Dean, and they both have their own breakfast in bed. Benny suggests going to the market for some minor shopping, it’s still overcast after all. Dean is the one who finds Benny’s glasses and fits them onto him with  concentrated effort. Benny grabs the keys and Dean grabs Benny’s jacket, sliding into it like it’s a shell. Benny smiles and kisses the part of his neck that’s exposed, and he can see Dean blushing away and biting the inside of his cheek as they walk out the door.

At the market, Benny grabs a few fresh fruit, and fishes a menu for a fast food venue out of Dean’s hands. He points Dean towards the dessert section, asking if he’s into sweets. Dean picks out a pie, then two, a pecan and an apple. Benny isn’t sure if he’s aware he’ll probably be eating that alone, but half looks forward to having a part in making sure of it. Benny also finds a packet of boxer briefs he thinks would fit Dean, and Dean doesn’t say anything when he sees them in the basket. Benny takes that as a positive sign.

Benny also reaches for a pack of smokes and Dean puts his fists in Benny’s pockets and stands behind him in line.

—

Dean scratches himself against a rusty nail sticking out from one of Benny’s cuboards. Benny gets the first aid kit in under a minute, yanking Dean’s shirt off and wiping the wound down with alcohol, Dean a hissing patient under him.

“You’re okay…” Dean says with some dull note of surprise while Benny puts a butterfly bandage over his arm.

“You’ve kept me well fed,” Benny smiles. Dean’s blood was tempting, any fresh blood was, but the worry over an infected wound was dominant in Benny’s senses currently.

Dean looks at the bandage over his arm with confusion.

“I guess I might have to redo the cabinets soon maybe.”

“I’ll help.”

Dean doesn’t look at all troubled by this promise. Benny nods slowly, putting the first aid kit away.

-

Dean is asleep, curled against Benny’s lap, back facing the wall, and blanketed by his coat. Benny isn’t even sure if it’s his anymore.

Dean’s fingers are curled into the cloth of his pantleg, and Benny’s smoking and looking at the anti-angel symbol on his door.

He carefully moves away from Dean, who only curls into the coat tighter with the absence of Benny.

He steps outside, flicking the cigarette into the water.

“Is he okay?” Benny doesn’t look to the side, doesn’t even jump in surprise.

“Of course he’s okay. He’s with me.” Benny says quietly, and the angel next to him goes stiff.

“I won’t stay long,”

“Good.”

“I just wanted to check up on him.”

“Wanted to see if there was more damage to erase?” Castiel stays quiet to the side for a long time.

“I healed him.”

“A man has a right to his scars.” He doesn’t try to keep the severity out of his tone. He looks at the profile standing on the side of his vessel.

Castiel intakes air sharply. His shoulders slump and he exhales. He tilts his head down.

“Tell him I’m sorry.”

“Tell him yourself,” he says, but Castiel is gone in a gust of wind. Benny’s jaw clenches and he shakes his head as he heads inside.

He climbs back into bed as quietly as possible, but Dean is half awake, and looking at him with sleepy confusion. He doesn’t ask questions though, just lets Benny wrap his arms around him and buries his face into Benny’s neck, sighing softly. Benny presses his mouth to his shoulder and holds him tight. 


End file.
